Specialists in Rural Community & Economic Development

Our interest in rural comes from a deeply held belief in the capacity of people who work with and live close with the land, to be effective stewards of our shared resource heritage given appropriate incentives, policies, and access to information and skills. We believe that healthy communities and healthy resources go hand in hand. We believe in rural areas as contributing partners to healthy and resilient regions, worthy of investment that creates wealth that sticks.

Community and economic development is about recognizing, preserving, and growing community wealth in all its forms: individual, financial, social, intellectual, natural, political, and built. Thriving communities can live well off the income from their combined wealth, while investing regularly in themselves to counteract depreciation. All wealth depreciates over time. Only by continually re-investing in all the forms of wealth are we able to increase both the quality of life for present generations and the sustainability of livelihoods for us and future generations. Yellow Wood is a national thought leader in wealth-based development as applied to low-wealth communities and regions.